Sunday, 20 January 2019

Based upon a true story of the Hatton Garden burglary
that made headlines in 2015, King Of
Thieves is a hugely entertaining heist movie that specifically
recalls the glory days of Ealing classic comedy The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), but it’s not really much like that,
at all. Despite its obvious appeal as an old boys caper, full of wrinkly blokes
doddering about in search of purpose and meaning in life, its crime drama
explores how elderly survivors can still exist in a treacherous London
underworld through twilight years with paranoia and a history of violence.
These are diamond geezers, but they're a bit wobbly on replacement hips and
frequent medications, while plodding through their sixties and seventies,
thanks to the ensemble cast of a lifetime.

Kenny (Tom Courtenay, The
Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner), Terry (Jim Broadbent, Cloud Atlas), Danny (Ray Winstone, Sexy Beast), Billy 'the fish' (Michael
Gambon, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife
& Her Lover), and Carl (Paul Whitehouse), team up with OAP widower
Brian (Michael Caine, Harry Brown, Get Carter) for one last job. Lounging around in pubs, ogling waitresses, cackling and
guffawing like retired soldiers when they're not swearing like jolly drunken
sailors, the habitual offenders of James Marsh’s movie smartly mine a rich seam
of elderly veteran and age-rage humour. They might appear harmless enough but,
watch out, Brian’s got a bus pass, their gang has a deaf diabetic as look-out,
and every one of them is increasingly desperate for a piss.

“In this game, there’s what you know and what you don’t
know, and if you don’t even fucking know what you don’t know, you know fuck
all!” Amusingly, the old men’s ace is the mysterious Basil (Charlie Cox, TV’s
Daredevil), a young techie with access to keys and a basic knowledge of 21st
century security. To counter the otherwise leisurely pace of this Easter
weekend crime, crucial action makes use of a wholly energetic fast-cutting,
from the job’s prep montage to smash ‘n’ grab drama in the safe-deposit vault, so
that key events play like scenes from a typical Guy Ritchie thriller.

Apart from the relaxed presence of Caine on good form,
Broadbent is doing his best psycho impression as the frighteningly volatile
Terry. Far more than just a starry revision of Ronnie Thompson’s The Hatton Garden Job (aka: One Last Heist, 2017), here’s a freshly
iconic take on genre themes of ‘victimless crime’, with the daring actions of
widely experienced villains, winningly portrayed by a gallery of great British
actors, as this highly commercial assembly of instantly recognisable faces,
with careers of dazzling screen credits, clearly enjoy themselves while playing
infamous rogues.

Notable use of The Killers’ song The Man, and a jazzy score link this often darkly witty modern
picture to British cinema’s treasure of retro images and sounds, as some
vintage clips from the likes of Billy
Liar (1963), The Italian Job
(1969), and Scum (1979), appear in
evocative career-flashbacks as a celebratory tribute to the longevity of these
stars, that linger not fade into social memory, and KOT presents its true face in the well-worn, yet not always
world-weary, expressions of this amazingly impressive cast of seniors.

Friday, 18 January 2019

Even
for horror fans, Dario Argento’s cinema can be an acquired taste... What one
viewer regards as peculiarly fascinating surrealism, another might judge to be simply
a narrative incoherence. Although it often seems that the central values of Argento’s
oeuvre flip-flop, from his imitation of Hitchcockian intrigues, to pure
aesthetic and technological cinematic merits, there can be no doubt his
commitment to a dazzling inventiveness for murder has given us more than a
handful of genuine horror classics.

Opera (aka: Terror At The Opera) rips off Phantom Of The Opera, but gets away with
it because it adds raw fears and unforgettable visual stylisation to its
electrifying fusion of macabre shocks, gruesome violence, black comic
characterisation, and borderline campy dialogue. Oddly enough, this is a rather
superior genre film to Argento’s own version of Phantom Of The Opera, made in 1998.

In
Opera, understudy Betty (Cristina
Marsillach) wins a coveted stage role, when the diva’s accident during
rehearsals for a new version of Verdi’s Macbeth gives the young singer her first
chance in the spotlight. However, the rising star soon becomes a tortured
witness to the activities of a vicious killer who forces her to watch as
helpless new victims die in agony. Some of this movie’s violence occurs off-screen,
but our heroine’s terrified expression as an unwilling observer sells a
frightful impact, so we (probably) all prefer not having to look at every
single gruesome thing that she sees, anyway. Despite creative misunderstandings
of identity and cunning whodunit misdirects, Opera really stands or falls based upon its ingenious and enthralling
murder set-pieces, and here Argento surpasses many fans’ expectations with
several spectacular and memorable kill-shots that are always worth repeated viewings.

Cast
as Lady Macbeth, Betty survives bad luck and the cruelty of her bondage ordeals
while she pits her wits against a mysterious psycho-killer. Argento’s renowned signatures
of visual dazzle and creative ultra-violence have rarely been this precisely and
skilfully composed, or so efficiently choreographed, whether for generating
unease or habitually and crazily inventive death scenes, where the intensely theatrical
unreality of a staged opera is expertly woven together with nightmarish flashbacks.

Some
filmmakers would have us believe that the a vital element in the creative
process is writing the script. They tell us that a good script is essential,
but I tend to disagree. A screenplay is certainly not a movie, anymore than a
shopping list is a dinner party, or a business plan (just ask any self-employed
worker how useful a page of numbers really is!) is a factory or any other going
concern.

Auteur theory maintains that the director, carrying overall
responsibility for the filmmaking project, is the true author of a movie, not
the screenwriter, and this idea applies to Argento more than most directors
because his best work succeeds while lacking some of the things often deemed to
be essential in a proverbial ‘good’ movie. Plot structure, convincingly
portrayed characters with credible motives, believable storytelling techniques
and comfortable moralising are rarely found in Argento’s brand of slasher cinema.

And
yet his work is just as interesting, compelling, and entertaining as other
kinds of tragedy depicted on screen, and many Argento pictures boast the kind
of demented narrative drive and striking mise en scene which leaves the
supposedly shocking horrors of many Hollywood filmic terror masters looking sadly
tame and bloodless. Whereas the average US filmmaker uses the apparatus of
filmmaking like a sculptor wields a hammer and chisel, chipping and carving
away excess to reveal a statuesque artwork beneath, Argento’s approach is more
like that of the potter.

When he wants a particularly grand effect, instead of
removing existing material he simply adds more clay! Argento’s acrobatic camera
would doubtless score highly with a panel of Olympic gymnastics judges and,
arguably, the Italian maestro has made better artistic use of tools like
Steadicam (intriguing POV shots) and the Louma crane (swooping abound theatrical
settings) than American directors, including the widely acclaimed Stanley
Kubrick and Martin Scorsese.

Superbly
restored and re-graded with a 2K scan, in consultation with Argento, this HD
release for the Blu-ray edition includes improved English subtitles for the
Italian track.

Disc
extras:

Aria Of Fear - a brand new
candid interview with director Dario Argento

Monday, 14 January 2019

Seven years after a robbery gone awry, the lone survivor
of a shoot-out is snuck out of a secure hospital. The patient, Macdonald
(Matthew Modine), decides on the spot to take a red pill as the first stage of testing
an experimental drug to fix his memory problems. A former nurse, Erin (Meadow
Williams), administers this clearly illicit treatment, reviving a lost history
with tortuous scenes of mental quakes and camera shakes. Stallone plays the top
detective, Sykes, unexcitedly musing about professionalism and sharpness of
conduct in the field.

A somewhat grungy authenticity elevates this otherwise
lacklustre picture from apparent production-line origins (perhaps it was shot
while Miller’s favourite lead Willis was away for his annual weekender
holiday?). As a violent crime drama, Backtrace
is made more worthwhile by its vaguely sci-fi mystery elements of the amnesia
thriller formula, where recall forms the basis for identity and persona, in
addition to uncovering a lost but never forgotten, and highly desirable prize.

In this particular case, it’s the secret location of the
robbery’s reportedly buried loot. Backtrace
concerns a $20-million treasure map stashed in the back of Macdonald’s head. The
puzzle is painstakingly unravelled with much of the agony suffered by Macdonald,
as Modine registers the character’s traumatic experiences and his intense
struggle to fully remember what’s happened to him. A guns-blazing finale is no
guarantee of thrilling quality, but Backtrace
does not fail in that respect.